


After the Storm

by Lady_of_the_Refrigerator



Series: Below the Winds [2]
Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-21
Updated: 2017-03-19
Packaged: 2018-09-01 07:02:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8614273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_of_the_Refrigerator/pseuds/Lady_of_the_Refrigerator
Summary: Now that everything had finally settled down, Red tried to give Lizzy some time and space, tried his damnedest to guard his wounded heart and keep his distance, but he couldn’t stay away for very long. [S4A spoilers, Lizzington, Agnesgate, technically a sequel to Below the Winds, but can be read independently]





	1. Chapter 1

Despite the fact that life was looking up for him for the first time in quite a while, Raymond Reddington was still miserable.  
  
Lizzy was back, safe and as sound as could be expected after being kidnapped by a madman who claimed to be her long-dead father that she believed she killed. Agnes, too, was safe and sound at long last. Even Tom Keen was gone, left to work for Susan Hargrave after a spectacular falling out with Lizzy that gave the term ‘irreconcilable differences’ new meaning. (Red still wasn’t entirely sure about all of the details surrounding the break up, a fact that both vexed and intrigued him.)  
  
Now that everything had finally settled down, Red tried to give Lizzy some time and space, tried his damnedest to guard his wounded heart and keep his distance, but he couldn’t stay away for very long. Tonight in particular he needed nothing more than to be near her.  
  
He felt more separated from Lizzy lately than he ever had, except when he believed she was dead. Maybe more separated than that, even—she’d been with him then in the shadows he saw out of the corner of his eye, in the whispers of the wind in his ear, in the brush of fabric against his skin. She’d been with him in his dreams and when he woke, in the memories of the pressure and warmth of her head resting on his shoulder.  
  
If she sent him away tonight, so be it. At least he could sit for a few minutes in the quiet of his car, closer to her than he was here. Physically, if in no other way.  
  
And so he donned his jacket and his hat and headed for the door. Dembe dutifully followed him, although Red was sure his friend disapproved of his decision to visit Lizzy, especially unannounced. He didn’t even have a convenient cover story in the form of a blacklister at the ready. He could be there to visit Agnes. That was as good a reason as any other, wasn’t it?  
  
Oh, well. He would deal with the fallout if and when it came.  
  
Red straightened his back, strengthened his resolve, and pulled open his front door; to his surprise, there stood Lizzy on the stoop, fist raised in mid-knock, with a sleeping Agnes snug in a baby sling across her body.  
  
“Lizzy,” he breathed.  
  
She dropped her arm slowly, awkwardly, but her lips quirked up slightly. He called her Lizzy, he realized. More often than not, he’d been calling her Elizabeth lately.  
  
“Were you going out?” she asked.  
  
“Yes,” he said, because it was the truth. Not the whole truth, of course. But still the truth.  
  
“If it’s a bad time—“  
  
“No.” Red shook his head, emphatic. “I was…” He trailed off with a halfhearted shrug, unable to say anything more without incriminating himself.  
  
“Where were you headed?”  
  
“Uh…” He stepped out of the way, waved her in. “It doesn’t matter now. Come in.”  
  
Lizzy eyed him strangely as she walked past him, kept stealing suspicious glances while she handed Agnes off to Dembe, as if she could read his silences just as clearly as his words. Perhaps she could. It wouldn’t be the first time she was able to see right through him. When she wasn’t half-terrified and stubborn in her willful denial, she could make him feel more vulnerable and transparent than just about anyone else.  
  
He led her to the study, quickly distracting himself with the liquor cabinet.  
  
“Would you like something to drink?” he asked, pulling two glasses down from the shelf over the wet bar before she had a chance to answer.  
  
“Brandy would be nice, if you have it.”  
  
Red’s hand froze over the modest collection of bottles. He hadn’t had brandy since the night in the shipping container. She couldn’t know that. She couldn’t purposely be trying to call up those memories. And if she was, was it for his benefit or hers? His detriment or hers?  
  
Clearly, he was overthinking things. Lizzy liked brandy. She liked it that night, why wouldn’t she still like it now? After all, she hadn’t suddenly sworn off red wine just because they also enjoyed a bottle of it together that night.  
  
She had enjoyed quite a few things that night, if he remembered correctly.  
  
(He did remember correctly.)  
  
Red shook himself mentally and poured a generous serving into each of their glasses, trying to ignore how much the glass stopper rattled in the decanter as he re-stoppered it.  
  
Relax. Breathe. It wasn’t as if history was in any position to repeat itself.  
  
He turned around to find Lizzy sitting on the couch, slightly to the left of center—leaving room enough for him to join her if he chose, but not enough to preserve the stilted distance they’d been keeping.  
  
If it was a challenge, he failed it. He set her drink on the coffee table and sat in the armchair facing her.    
  
She waited until he lifted his glass to his lips before she spoke. “You were coming to see me, weren’t you?”  
  
He swallowed, liquor burning its way down his throat. “Yeah,” he offered, rough, shy, and sheepish.  
  
“Why? Haven’t we… haven’t I hurt you enough?”  
  
“Why did you come?” he asked instead of answering; she flinched as if it was an accusation. And it wasn’t. He only meant to draw a parallel—perhaps she came to see him for the same reason he was planning to go to her. She couldn’t stay away. She didn’t want to. Maybe she _wanted_ to want to. Maybe she thought she should. But she didn’t. Couldn’t. That’s how he felt sometimes. Most of the time. “Never mind. How are you? How is Agnes?”  
  
Lizzy’s face brightened a bit, and Red couldn’t help the slight smile that curved his lips at the thought of the baby girl. “Agnes is fine,” she said. “A little fussy, though, lately. I think she’s having growing pains.”  
  
“Ah. Yeah, I, uh… I remember those days.”  
  
A thick, uneasy quiet settled over the two of them. Red flicked at a minuscule piece of lint on his trousers. Lizzy hunched forward, holding her glass between both hands with her elbows braced against her knees.  
  
“How are _you_?” he repeated, when the silence stretched too long and taut.  
  
She swirled the liquor in her glass for a long moment, studying it, weighing her answer carefully.  
  
“Lonely,” she said.  
  
The word fell like a stone, a heavy thump bouncing off the hastily built wall between them. His hand twitched in his lap, itching with the instinct to reach for her. She wouldn’t mind, probably. They’d touched since she died. He held her hand. She hugged him.  
  
“Is there anything that I can—“  
  
“ _Don’t_.” She shook her head and set her half-empty glass down hard on the coffee table with a dull thud. “I can’t keep doing this dance we’ve been doing,” she said, in a rush.  
  
His brows furrowed in confusion. “I’m sorry?”  
  
She stared at him in wild-eyed shock for a moment, as if she was surprised by what she had begun to say. But she shook herself visibly and continued anyway, rubbing at the scar on her wrist all the while. “We have a child together, Red. We have a little girl.”


	2. Chapter 2

There was no way for Red to prepare himself for this conversation, no way to guess where it would lead. It was as paralyzing as it was exhilarating. A chill ran through him from head to toe, as if his entire body had been doused with icy water. It stole his breath, sent his mind reeling in a dizzy tailspin, and raised goosebumps on the back of his neck.  
  
Lizzy had never acknowledged Red’s connection to Agnes out loud—it had usually been ‘ _my_ baby’ or ‘ _my_ daughter’ or something just as paradoxically pointed and vague. Most of the time she didn’t even bother hiding behind the facade that Agnes was Tom’s around Red, and when she did, it was only when she was particularly upset with him. She’d been every bit a woman resentful of and estranged from her former lover. Sometimes it surprised him that no one ever caught on.  
  
He didn’t expect her to acknowledge his connection to Agnes now, not when everything was finally said and done. He didn’t expect it to ever happen; it was easier to leave it unspoken, especially at this point.  
  
Red had never spoken of their connection either, of course. He and Lizzy spent her entire pregnancy skirting around the truth rather than confronting it. Neither of them had even wanted to _think_ about dealing with the reality head on, let alone face it plainly enough to have any kind of frank discussion. The kind of discussion Lizzy was obviously interested in having now.  
  
Red worked his jaw, but no words would come, no sound at all. He was at a loss the likes of which he had rarely experienced in his life. Lizzy had turned her attention away from his shell-shocked face almost as soon as she’d spoken and focused on the carvings on the coffee table instead, still rubbing at her scar.  
  
“She rolled over on her own for the first time the other day,” she said. “She laughs all the time, smiles all the time. You should… you should be there to see it. You and I… we’re the only family she has.”  
  
Red cleared his throat, and when he finally managed to speak, his voice was hoarse. “You didn’t want me to be there before.”  
  
“You didn’t want to be there,” she shot back.  
  
“That’s not true—“  
  
“Well, you sure as hell made it seem like it was true.”  
  
Red frowned. “I don’t understand.”  
  
“The day I told you I was pregnant. Your knee-jerk reaction, you… you implied I shouldn’t have the baby. I know you’d do anything for her now, I _know_ you love her, but that day… Tell me, Red—how else was I supposed to take it?  
  
“You knew as well as I did there was a chance this would happen when we…” Her gaze stayed fixed on the table between them and she swallowed hard. “You’re a grown man. You know where babies come from. But you still said—”  
  
“I… The things I said to you that day weren’t… appropriate. I tried to apologize—”  
  
“You did. And I appreciate that. I do. I said a lot of things I never should have said to you either. And it’s no excuse, but I want you to understand that I was _terrified_. I had no idea what to do once I didn’t have you anymore.”  
  
“You always had me.”  
  
“Not the way I wanted,” she said, ruefully. “I thought… after everything we’d been through… that once I was exonerated, you and I would at least _try_ to—”  
  
“ _Lizzy_ ,” he interrupted. She pressed her lips together in a thin line; her chin trembled a bit, betraying her best efforts to appear composed.  
  
Her voice trembled, too, when she said, “I fell in love with you when we were on the run. Did you realize that?”  
  
Red’s heart clenched. “No,” he answered, barely more than an exhalation. “I didn’t.”  
  
He had turned those fateful words over and over in his head—her last words to him before she died—and tried to justify them, to explain them away as anything other than what they appeared to be. Somehow, it was easier to wrap his mind around the idea that she would tell him she cared for him, nothing more. She’d done so before, after all. The alternative was simply inconceivable.  
  
“Of course. Of course you didn’t,” she said, wiping furiously at the tears that had spilled down her cheeks, agitated and annoyed.  
  
“I’m not the only one who doubted…“  
  
“What on earth did you think I…“  
  
They both trailed off into silence, having spoken at the same time. She shook her head.  
  
“You pushed me away when we got back, Red. You acted like everything was business as usual, no time to breathe, to settle down, just right back to the way things were; I couldn’t _do_ that, not after we… And then that asshole jumped me in the parking lot and the goddamn doctor all but lectured me about being more careful for the baby’s sake. Like being attacked was my _choice_. I’ve never felt so alone in my entire life.  
  
 “I didn’t even know for sure that I was pregnant until that night. Hell of a way to find out, huh?” She met Red’s eyes for a moment and clenched her jaw before looking away again. “You were the first person I told about the baby, did you know that?”  
  
“You didn’t tell me she was mine,” he said, helpless, not confirming, not denying.  
  
“I wanted to! I tried to! You didn’t want to hear it—you grabbed onto the possibility that she was Tom’s like it was some kind of lifeline, like you wanted no part of her at all.”  
  
“That wasn’t the reason. Please tell me you knew that wasn’t the reason.”  
  
“Then what was?”  
  
Red took a deep breath and let it out slowly through his mouth. “Lizzy, you… you weren’t the only one who was terrified. You and I were on the run together for months. My associates already doubted me; once you were exonerated, it only got worse. Can you imagine how they would’ve reacted if rumors got out that you were pregnant right after you were free? If they started looking into it too closely and realized the dates didn’t quite add up? Or rather, that they _did_?  
  
“You saw what happened with Kirk. It would’ve been a thousand times more dangerous for you, for Agnes, if anyone suspected your daughter was also mine. Especially Kirk. Good Lord. He would’ve gutted me no matter what I tried to tell him.”  
  
“You didn’t care about any of that when we were on the run.”  
  
“Of course I cared. I worried about it all the time. It was always in the back of my mind.”  
  
“It didn’t stop us though, did it?”  
  
“No. No, it didn’t.”  
  
Lizzy reached out for her glass, the scar on her wrist an angry red from her nervous rubbing; Red winced at the sight. She took a calming sip of the liquor and leaned back on the couch for the first time that evening.  
  
“So you did know she was yours, even in the beginning.”  
  
“Yes. But you made your choice,” he said, his voice measured. “I tried to accept it.”  
  
“It wasn’t the choice I wanted to make.”  
  
“Then why did you?”  
  
Her eyes snapped up to meet his. “What was I supposed to do, just sit around and wait for you to pull your head out of your ass?”  
  
“No, of course not. But Tom?” Red never did quite get the hang of saying the man’s name in a way that didn’t sound like he was talking about a piece of chewing gum stuck to the bottom of his shoe. Lizzy usually didn’t take kindly to his tone, but this time all she did was give a soft snort of a laugh. It made him all the more curious about what drove them apart.  
  
Unfortunately, her amusement faded quickly and she side-stepped Red’s question the same way she had been doing since the day Tom Keen walked out of her life.  
  
“Why couldn’t you have just explained it to me like this then, instead of trying to keep me at arm’s length? Do you know how foolish you made me feel, for letting my guard down? For falling for you?”  
  
“I was afraid,” he said, haltingly, “that if I tried to explain my reasoning, you would talk me out of it.”  
  
Lizzy’s eyes widened and her breathing sped up, like she was racing headlong towards a panic attack. She put her glass back on the coffee table, her hand shaking as she did so. “You would’ve… Would you have _let_ me talk you out of it?”  
  
Red’s frown deepened, the corners of his lips pulling down in that way he couldn’t fight, the way that meant he was a razor’s edge away from breaking down.

“More likely than not,” he said, miserably.


	3. Chapter 3

“Jesus, Red. You mean… it’s possible that we could have…” Lizzy trailed off, unable or unwilling to finish the thought aloud.  
  
She had gone quite pale and her voice was quiet, unsteady; Red’s eyes stung at the sound of it wavering, an automatic reaction he discovered sitting at her side in that park so long ago, when he held her hand for the first time and told her she could trust him. He blinked rapidly, quickly losing the battle to clear his tear-blurred vision.  
  
His heart ached. It was true—all the conflict and sorrow and angst could perhaps have been avoided, if only the two of them hadn’t run away from each other at that pivotal moment of alarming reality. The possibility that they could have been together in those months after her exoneration, dealt with everything together… It was painful to think about.  
  
Sure, the baby would’ve complicated their professional relationship, but to say their professional relationship had been simple to start with—or even merely complicated—was an understatement. And judging by the Task Force’s inexplicable acceptance of Tom Keen despite the havoc he had wrought in everybody’s lives, even _they_ might have understood their predicament.  
  
Trauma did things to people. High stress and anxiety necessitated comfort. It wouldn’t be much of a stretch to grasp that he and Lizzy had reacted to the trauma of the manhunt in such a human way, that they had turned to each other when they had nowhere else to turn. They weren’t the first to do so and they certainly wouldn’t be the last. (Red had, after all, heard the rumors about Ressler and Samar.)  
  
At this rate, the _what if_ s would haunt them to the end of their days.  
  
Red pushed himself up from his chair and scooped up both of their glasses, in desperate need of a distraction. “Let me refill this for you.”  
  
Once his back was to her, he wiped discreetly at the tears that had fallen despite his best efforts to suppress them. He busied himself with the decanter, hoping he could get a better hold of his emotions before he had to face her again.  
  
The hairs on the back of Red’s neck stood on end milliseconds before Lizzy’s hand settled on his shoulder. The contact was fleeting—her hand skimmed away almost as soon as it touched him—but it startled him all the same, making him jump like a cat whose whisker brushed against an unfamiliar finger on a cautious, outstretched hand just a moment too soon.  
  
He took a shallow, ragged breath. “Elizabeth.”  
  
“I should’ve tried harder back then, I should’ve told you how I felt—“  
  
“No,” he said, gruffly.  
  
“Why not?”  
  
Slowly, Red turned around and they stood there silently for a long moment, moving neither closer to one another or further away; Lizzy tapped an anxious rhythm against the countertop, searching his face while she waited for his answer.  
  
“At the time,” he said, eventually, “I’m not sure telling me how you felt would’ve helped.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Somehow, I convinced myself that as long as we didn’t acknowledge the truth, no one else could possibly exploit it. Once it was out in the open, even if only between ourselves…” He let the sentence hang.  
  
”You would have pushed me away even more than you did?”  
  
“I’m afraid I might have.”  
  
“Just because I love you? That’s pretty screwed up.”  
  
“I don’t have a monopoly on screwed up things in our relationship.”  
  
She took a step back, gripping the edge of the counter. “Point taken,” she said, the cool timbre of her voice nearly masking the underlying hurt.  
  
He held out her refilled glass and she took it, fingers grazing his as she pulled it back. She raised the glass to her mouth, but stopped without drinking, gazing at a point over his shoulder as if she’d become lost in a memory.  
  
“For the record”—she paused, took a sip, cleared her throat of the renewed burn of the alcohol—“I thought you would be OK without me.”  
  
“Why on earth would you think that?” he snapped, and immediately regretted it.  
  
She had flinched. Visibly. She tensed up and braced herself, all of her defenses snapping into place in an instant, triggered simply by the tone and volume of his voice. Her eyes locked with his and he could pinpoint the exact moment when she managed to beat back the instinctive panic and began to relax again.  
  
Red had seen the signs before, had seen that strange guarded way Lizzy always held herself around Tom Keen, sometimes even when she only spoke about him. He surmised that there was a part of her even now, however skillfully buried, that had been wired over the years to react defensively to a man’s raised voice. Especially someone with whom she had been… intimate…  
  
Dear Lord. He felt ill. He never wanted to do anything that reminded her of the worst parts of that man, even subconsciously.  
  
“Lizzy, I’m sorry—“  
  
“No. Please don’t apologize. You’re right. I was so desperate that day that I… If I had more time to think, I would’ve… I just… I _had_ to believe you’d be OK. I had to believe you’d be out there somewhere in the world after I was gone, still living your life. You’d mourn, but you’d make it. Like you always have. But I was wrong.  
  
“I’m sorry I couldn’t let myself believe you could care that much about me. I’ve always been so afraid that the second I let myself believe it, I would find proof that you didn’t. That everything was a lie.”  
  
“So when I pushed you away, I only gave your fear credence.”  
  
“Sort of. It still wasn’t fair to treat it like an inarguable fact. Not just because I was afraid. You still cared, even when we weren’t together anymore. I knew it, but it didn’t make it easier to trust that there were never any ulterior motives.”  
  
Lizzy pursed her lips and shook her head. “Look. I’ve known for a long time that you would die for me. I just… never considered the possibility that you might die _without_ me. But that’s… almost what happened, isn’t it?”  
  
He couldn’t deny it, couldn’t lie to her even about this, so he said nothing. She knew his silence was as good as confirmation.  
  
She rested a hesitant hand on his forearm. “Red?”  
  
“Did…” He cleared his throat. “Did Dembe tell you about that, too?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“How did you know?”  
  
“Aram… everybody, really.” She laughed, a hollow, humorless puff of air. “I thought Samar was gonna kill me. She cornered me back when she was still thinking of leaving. Told me how you disappeared, how… distraught Aram had been, thinking you were going to hurt yourself. How you hit rock bottom, and Aram basically had to go out and drag you back to the Task Force himself. She figured you’d never tell me the whole story. She was right, wasn’t she?” she asked, her thumb rubbing back and forth, a gentle coaxing motion.  
  
He shook his head. “Not exactly. Nobody knows the whole story. Not Aram. Not Samar. Not even Dembe. If he did… Well, he would’ve still worried about my mental state, but at least he would’ve understood me better. I think.” He sighed heavily at the curious look on her face. It was time, he supposed. Time to share something he hadn’t shared with another living soul.  
  
(Although he suspected very strongly that Kate guessed the truth. Which… colored his ability to forgive her, as unfair as that was.)  
  
“I didn’t hit rock bottom just because you died, Lizzy. You died giving birth to my child,” he explained. “I could accept that some of the danger you were in from the Cabal, from Kirk, was my fault and that some of it wasn’t. But you dying due to a complication of childbirth…”  
  
“No. No, I’m sorry, you can’t have that. Sleeping with each other was a mutual decision. The complications weren’t your fault, Red. Jesus.” She slid her hand down his forearm to his hand and wrapped her fingers around his, awkwardly pressed against the flatness of the counter.  
  
“You have to promise me you’ll never do that again,” she pleaded earnestly, the echo of a conversation long past.  
  
“Excuse me?”    
  
She squeezed his fingers. “The drugs. The recklessness. I want my daughter to have a chance to have her father in her life for as long as possible. Like I had Sam.”  
  
“And Tom?”  
  
For a moment, Lizzy seemed genuinely confused, as if asking about Tom in relation to Agnes was a non sequitur. Which perhaps offered an interesting insight into her thought processes where he was concerned. “What about him?” she asked.  
  
“Why is he suddenly not good enough to fill that role for Agnes? Sam wasn’t your biological father, either.”  
  
Her face closed off and she pulled her hand away. “You goddamn know why,” she hissed. “He’s a criminal at heart, Red, just like you’ve always said he was. He’ll never be satisfied here. He’s only been playing at being a family man because it gets him what he thinks he needs right now.”  
  
“And what about me?”  
  
“You? You’re the opposite,” she said, like it was easy, obvious. Such a simple statement and it shifted the ground beneath his feet.  
  
The opposite—did she mean that literally or was it only a convenient turn of phrase? Did she really think of him that way? A family man at heart, who was only a criminal because it got him what he needed?  
  
It was difficult to remind himself that it wasn’t a negative thing for her to see in him. If anything, it was more positive than anything she’d accused him of in a year. It was progress. He shouldn’t feel the need to withdraw into his defensive shell just because progress could be scary, yet another moment of terrifying transparency.  
  
“What happens when he comes back? I don’t think he’s the type to take too kindly to another man—well, me specifically—raising his ‘daughter’.”  
  
“Tom’s gone,” she said, flatly.  
  
“Right. For now. That man’s like a bad cough, he never stays away for long.”  
  
“This time it’s different. He’s gone for good.”  
  
“He’s never respected your wishes for him to stay away in the past. Something must’ve happened to make you so sure he will now.”  
  
Ah. There. He hit a nerve. She pressed her lips together in a thin line. “I don’t want to talk about it. He’s gone and that’s all that matters.”  
  
“He left you to care for your daughter alone. I find that… confusing. I don’t have many positive things to say about Tom Keen, but he seemed to care for Agnes, inasmuch as he was capable of caring for anything. Although, he _did_ have an awfully reckless way of ensuring her safety—”  
  
“All right, that’s enough,” she bit out, cutting him off.  
  
Pushing herself away from the counter, Lizzy began to pace. She made four trips to the edge of the sofa and back before she stopped in front of him. “He left because of you, OK?” she said, pointing an accusing finger at his chest.  
  
He held his hands out in front of him in a kind of surrender. “I did everything I could to step back and let you live your life—“  
  
“No. God. Not like that. It was the clock you built Agnes. He made a crack about you playing grandpa to her with the gifts, the visits… I told him to go fuck himself.”  
  
Red blinked in surprise. “That’s… it? That’s why he left you?”  
  
She shrugged.  
  
“It’s not like it was the first time he made comments like that. Like before the wedding—he joked about asking you to walk me down the aisle. He thought he was being funny, but this time I was just so sick of all the insinuations, I snapped. I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t take another comment putting you in that box. Not when it’s so far off the mark.  
  
“Do you know how fucking…” She dropped her voice, took a step forward into his personal space. “How _frustrating_ it is to have people assume that you’re my father? I mean, we were lovers for _months_ , for God’s sake. What the hell does that make me?”  
  
She sighed, dropping her gaze to stare at the loosened knot on his tie. “The worst part is Tom _knows_ it’s not true. He knows it grates on my nerves and he still wouldn’t stop. Anything to invalidate my relationship with anyone other than him.  
  
“And then Kirk shows up and he’s so… obsessed about you having an affair with my mother—“  
  
“Lizzy—“  
  
“I get it, Red, I get it. Either the affair actually happened or it didn’t—I don’t care; either way, I know where I stand with you now. But I just can’t pretend with other people anymore. I can’t sit idly by and let them think about us like that. Not even Tom. Especially not Tom.”  
  
“Did you tell him? About Agnes?”  
   
“No, I didn’t. But Agnes was my breaking point. It doesn’t take a genius to jump to the conclusion as to why. And the way her face always lit up whenever she saw you, that probably didn’t help. Besides, it’s not as if he ever really trusted me anyway. About you most of all.” She laughed bitterly. “I took away the only thing he ever cared about. I guess I should be glad he didn’t try to hurt me.”  
  
She leaned back against the counter, gripping the edge of it so tightly that her knuckles were white. “I’ve done a lot of soul searching since he left. I think…” She trailed off, biting her lip.  
  
“What is it?”  
  
“Never mind.”  
  
“Please. Tell me.”  
  
Lizzy closed her eyes for a long moment, seeming to work up the strength to answer him. “I think I lash out at you so much because you’re safe. If I lashed out at Tom half as much as I’ve lashed out at you…” She shrugged and picked up her glass again, but instead of drinking from it, she only swirled the remaining liquor around.  
  
“If you were still unsure of what he was capable of doing to you, why would you go back to him? Why take that chance?”  
  
“I wasn’t sure I deserved any better.”  
  
“Oh, _Lizzy_ …”  
  
At that moment, Red wanted nothing more than to take her into his arms and promise her that everything would be OK, but they were long past that. He’d never be able to shake the devastation he felt when Kate had looked at him so knowingly and accused him of betraying Lizzy by offering her promises of safety that he couldn’t fulfill.  
  
For now, he settled for leaning against the counter at her side.  
  
“Agnes, though. Agnes does deserve better,” she said, with her voice near to breaking. “You know when you came to see me before the wedding? And that’s what you said, that Tom didn’t deserve to be her father? I knew you were right. I just… I wanted you to ask me not to marry him because… because you loved me. Not for my own good. Or hers. God. It’s all semantics. I shouldn’t’ve been so damn stubborn.” She wiped her face with the back of her hand. “I don’t know how to fix this.”  
  
They fell silent, standing close enough to feel each other’s body heat, lost in thought.  
  
“I do, you know,” Red said, after a while.  
  
“Well, I could use any advice you have to give.”  
  
It took Red a moment to backtrack through their conversation. “Good God, no—I have no idea how to fix any of _this_ , I’m winging it here as much as you are.” He swallowed, steeling himself to say the words he’d always been so hesitant to say. “But I _do_ love you, Lizzy.”  
  
She peered up at him through the curtain of her hair. “Still? Even after everything?”  
  
“It’ll take a hell of a lot more than death to make you lose me. However you want me.”  
  
“This can’t all be about what I want. I want you to be in Agnes’ life. The rest has to be up to you.”  
  
“The rest?”  
  
“If you want to just be her father or if you would—eventually—be open to… more. Because I am. Open to more. Someday.”  
  
He couldn’t help the incredulous smile that curved his lips. “We could be miserable together,” he said.  
  
“We’re miserable apart,” she responded, simply. “This is the one thing we haven’t tried. We weren’t really all that miserable on the run, were we? We should’ve been.”  
  
He bumped his shoulder into hers and tilted his head conspiratorially. “That’s because we make a great team,” he whispered, with a wink. She laughed, in spite of herself.  
  
The faint sound of crying filtered into the room through the old house. Red and Lizzy exchanged a glance. Sure enough, before long the crying grew louder and there was a knock at the door.  
  
“Come in, Dembe,” Red called out. The door swung open and in came his frazzled-looking friend, with a teary, red-faced Agnes in tow.  
  
“I apologize, Elizabeth, Raymond—I tried to keep her occupied, but she doesn’t want me.”  
  
“And I thought you were the fun uncle,” Red said, pushing himself off the counter. “Here, I’ll take her.”  
  
As soon as Agnes was in Red’s arms, she quieted down and immediately started to imitate the ridiculous faces he was pulling. He even managed to get a giggle out of her, despite her lingering sniffles. Dembe and Lizzy looked on in surprise.  
  
“Elizabeth,” Dembe said, eyeing the pair with growing curiosity.  
  
Lizzy met Red’s eyes, her questioning gaze loaded with meaning; he nodded so faintly he wasn’t sure she was able to pick up on it until she spoke.  
  
“Someday we’ll have to talk, Dembe. Soon.”  
  
Dembe nodded and, with one more lingering glance at Red, left without another word.  
  
Lizzy wandered over to Red and Agnes. “She missed you,” she said.  
  
“I missed her, too,” he said, letting Agnes grab hold of his finger with her little hand; she tried to bring it up to her mouth, but he tickled her little body and replaced his finger with her pacifier instead.  
  
“She always knew, I think,” Lizzy said softly. “You know, as much as he cared for her, sometimes I think Tom was relieved to have an excuse for why she never really warmed up to him. It ruined his fantasy.”  
  
Red made a soothing, humming noise in agreement as he rocked the baby in his arms. “He gave her your name when you were gone—Agnes Elizabeth. Was that part of the plan?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“It… I almost felt some sympathy for him when he did it. That he would care enough to have your name live on with your daughter.”  
  
She nodded and studied his face for a long moment. “You never warmed up to him either.”  
  
Red shrugged. “Like father like daughter, I guess.”


End file.
